Kolkata: After 36 years, the wife of an Indian Army naik who never returned to his unit has approached the police seeking a formal First Information Report and a closure report, so that the Army’s “deserter” tag on her husband can be revisited and she can claim family pension and related benefits.
Arokia Mary Rajan, 61, of Sarsuna, has stated that her husband, Edwin Rajan, was serving as a naik and clerk in the Army Service Corps and was last posted at Dalhousie Cantonment in Himachal Pradesh. On 18 January 1990, after completing leave, he left the family quarter at Strand Lines, Fort William, to rejoin his unit. He never reported for duty. Enquiries with the unit produced no information about his whereabouts.
She has said she reported the disappearance to Hastings police station at the time, though she no longer possesses a copy of that complaint or its general diary number. The Army subsequently recorded him as a deserter. She maintains that he was not a wilful deserter and that he was the victim of an untoward incident while travelling back to his posting. Some local reports have described the latest complaint as alleging abduction by unknown persons.
In 1995, the commanding officer of the Bengal Area Provost Unit (Military Police) formally took up the matter with Hastings police. Mrs Rajan later submitted representations to Hastings police in 2013 and to the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) at Lalbazar in 2018.
She has stated that she raised three children without financial support from the Army and has been unable to secure family pension because of the deserter classification. A family member described the latest approach as their last attempt to obtain justice.
She approached the police on Sunday seeking registration of an FIR and a closure report that would enable her to pursue pensionary and other benefits. Police have accepted the complaint and have begun examining the old record. Officers have noted that a case of this age is difficult to reconstruct, including whether he boarded a train from Howrah or left the journey at an intermediate point.
Army sources have explained the usual sequence under the Army Act. Unauthorised absence is first treated as absence without leave. If a soldier remains untraced for 30 days, Section 106 requires a court of inquiry; the individual may then be declared a deemed deserter.
In long-untraced cases, service records often continue to show the person as a deserter. Deserters are ordinarily eligible only for provident fund balances, not family pension.
Officials have said that if the police record that the soldier did not abscond of his own accord for example, that he met with an accident the deserter tag can be reconsidered and other benefits examined. That change in status would have to precede any pension processing.
The family’s immediate demand is therefore procedural: a police FIR and a documented finding on the 1990 disappearance, which they hope will allow Army records to treat Edwin Rajan as missing rather than as a deserter and open the path to family pension.
